Breast cancer patients occupy 23% of female cancer patients all over the world. An early diagnosis is very important because breast cancer, which is the top female cancer killer in the case of females in their 30s to 40s, spreads well and the relapse rate is very high. Differently from the West, women in their 40s in Korea have the highest incidence rate of breast cancer, and a ratio of breast cancer patients of pre-menopausal females reaches 60% and is three times higher than that of the West. Therefore, Korea executes a regular diagnosis at a national level for prevention and early diagnosis of breast cancer.
As devices for diagnosing breast diseases, a mammography scanner and an ultrasound imaging device have been mainly used, and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system and a thermography scanner have been also used.
The mammography scanner is a device to irradiate X-rays onto a patient's body which is an examination object, detect a difference in energy intensity distribution of X-rays, which penetrate through the human body and are obtained by an X-ray detector, and to output it into an image.
Such a mammogram, which is an anatomical and structural image of abnormal tissue, is a breast cancer screening conducted to women after their 40s to 45s in most countries for the purpose of early diagnosis of breast cancer. However, such breast mammography increases an occurrence risk of breast cancer because radiation dose of the breast mammography is 100 times higher than that of tomography. Moreover, in the case of pre-menopausal women, women with large or small breasts, women with breasts in which prosthesis is implanted, women who is in hormone replacement therapy, women with a breast fibrocystic disease, or women anamnesis of biopsy, there are many limitations in application. In the case of dense breasts mostly observed in Asian women, it is low in lesion detection rate, and it is difficult to observe micro-calcification mainly observed in malignant tumor.
Furthermore, studies show that thermography is a noninvasive and noncontact screening and breast thermogram has no radiation exposure and is higher in sensitivity and specificity on breast diseases in comparison with mammogram. Neovascularization in malignant tumor starts in tumor diameter of 0.15 mm and develops well in tumor diameter of 1 mm to 3 mm. Differently from normal cells, nitric oxide generated in a tumor cell expands the diameter of the blood vessel and increases a blood flow rate. Therefore, Thermography can scan changes in body temperature and the activity of blood vessels, which are physiologic changes generated before a structural change of the breast tissue, such that a patient can be diagnosed in an early stage.
Recently, technologies to diagnose diseases complexly using various diagnosis devices have been developed. Korean Patent No. 10-0804809 discloses a technology using near-infrared rays and X-rays.
The conventional technology has X-rays and near infrared rays operated separately so as to scan a pectoral muscle part and an armpit part that X-rays cannot scan. However, technologies for scanning the same part related with breast diseases using various diagnosis methods have been not yet developed.